


Vanity Over Empathy

by sweetlullabies



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Betrayal, Guns, Hunters & Hunting, Knives, M/M, Mean Louis, Mentions of Murder, Narcissism, Read at Your Own Risk, Sad Ending, Survival, There is NO major character death, Very Minor Character Death, Violence, Weapons, but honestly it doesn't get too graphic, ever watched divergent?, it's not gory or anything, some of this is based off of gallavich, think of them as the factionless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-02 01:26:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10934115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetlullabies/pseuds/sweetlullabies
Summary: “Listen,” Louis growls, his voice at a scarily low level.  “I’m not asking you.  I’mtellingyou.  If you don’t let us stay here, it’s going to be tragic when your minions find out you’ve been killed with your own weapon.”They stand there for a moment, wrists tight, the veins of their arms fiercely evident as Louis holds the spear in the direction of Harry’s abdomen with everything he has.  The air of the tent is thick with tension as they stare each other down and Louis continues to use his utmost strength.Louis finally releases him harshly, locking eyes with him in order to understand that the guy is on the same page.In a world with no remorse, Louis is getting along just fine in the race of survival, but he faces a minor setback once he finds himself stuck with a polar opposite.





	Vanity Over Empathy

**Author's Note:**

> i posted two fics at the same time today because they'd both been sitting in my drafts for a while now. one of them (*cough* this one *cough*) is painful, and the [other one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10976949) is pleasant. feel free to read whichever one you like. you can even choose to be a bit brave and read both. or neither, i'll still love you all the same!
> 
> i'm pretty sure i set a new record for myself by writing this in a day, so i'm fairly proud
> 
> *LOOK AT THE TAGS* *READ AT YOUR OWN RISK*
> 
> also: nothing in this fic reflects any of my actual beliefs, values, or opinions. everything in this is fictional, and i can assure you, none of the real life 1d boys have ever been through any of this.

 

 

“Steer left.”

Zayn snorts as he keeps his eyes concentrated ahead.  “I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to be going right.”

Louis rolls his eyes as he leans forward, squinting out of the window and trying to see through the foggy, dark haze they’re soaring through.  He crumples up the map in his hands as he moves to shove Zayn out of the way.

“Hey!” Zayn exclaims.

“I can’t read that fucking map,” Louis grumbles, taking control of the wheel.  “Too much blood on it.”

Zayn huffs as he shifts over.  “That wouldn’t have been the case if you’d just used the tear gas instead of the cleaver, but no one  _ever_  listens to me.”

Louis puts up a hand in order to silence him.  “Shut up.  I’m concentrating.”

Louis’ pretty certain he’s now flying blindly, because he has no idea of where he is, and the air is so misty around the ship that he can hardly see where the fuck he’s going.  All he knows is that he has to find a spot for food somewhere—he needs to find other people,  _humans_ that are actually surviving right now, so that he and Zayn can invade whatever they’ve got going on and take all of their food.

He hasn’t eaten in an entire day and it’s starting to get to him a bit.

“Fuck,” Louis breathes, wishing the front lights on his ship still worked.

He personally likes to call it the  _S.S. Louis_.  He’s aware it’s not a cruise ship sailing across the ocean and its purpose is contradictory to its name, but he gets to name it whatever he  _wants_.  He’s the one who built it after all.

That’s right, he, himself, built this entire ship that floats freely in the air with his bare hands and a few tools.  It’s a bit stuffy—well, very stuffy, but it has everything they need in order to continue their steady streak of success: spears, handheld guns, bullets, arrows, poisons, gases, somewhat clean water, all that stuff.

“Try to see if you can read it,” Louis directs, becoming frustrated by Zayn making no use of himself.

He hears the sounds of Zayn de-crumpling the map and taking a moment to spread it out, and then there’s a stretch of silence, where either the boy is daydreaming again and Louis is ready to smack the shit out of him, or he’s actually trying to interpret what’s on the map.

“I think you’re supposed to turn—“

Zayn’s sentence gets cut off when the  _S.S. Louis_ shakes, and both of them get jostled around a little before the ship straightens out again.

They groan in unison as Louis rubs a spot on his head that had bumped into the roof of the ship.

“Another attack  _already_?” Zayn asks.

Louis reaches over to turn on his rearview camera light, and he can’t see any shadowy, jet black figures resembling ships in view, so he figures that’s a good sign.

“I don’t think so,” Louis replies.  “It was probably just a bird or someth—“

They both completely crash onto one side of the ship as the  _S.S. Louis_ tilts on its side, and Louis’ pretty sure he crushes Zayn’s spleen in the process.

Louis becomes fully alert as he scrambles to get off of Zayn.  “What the fuck—“

Another jolt comes about, knocking the ship harder than it’s ever been hit before, and then another comes.  And another.  Each one is more damaging and alarming than the one before.

Both Louis and Zayn are in a state of hysteria and bafflement as the shots continue, and Louis clambers to steer the ship as close to the ground as possible so that they don’t free fall from the sky if this thing completely breaks down.

One single shot bursts through the front windshield of the ship, and in a split second, everything becomes explosive.  Louis can’t make out specific details of what happens, because he squeezes his eyes shut through it all, but the entire ship seems to completely come apart in soaring pieces as his body goes flying out toward the ground beneath him, and his mouth is screaming murder.

He hits the grass below hard enough to know he’s going to be sore for a couple of days, and he winces as his body topples over the ground like an abused rag doll.

He doesn’t even get a second to recover from the fall before his eyes are met with the barrel of a gun pointing at his face.  After a few blinks, he becomes aware that this isn’t any regular gun as he holds onto his aching shoulder that took his entire fall.  It’s a _machine gun_.

Louis disregards this fact as he shifts his gaze over to find Zayn, doubled over as well, and he seems to be nearly in tears over how painful his fall probably was.  Louis figures he may have to leave him behind later.

Louis’ eyes  _then_  shift over to the  _S.S. Louis_ , and it’s completely shattered—in  _pieces_.  He can see everything that had once been inside it, strewn all over the ground and now hardly recognizable.  All those valuable items that Louis had spent  _eons_ procuring and making  _himself_.

 _Hell_ no.

His eyes finally move back to the gun that is  _still_  pointing directly at his face.  His initial thought is to ask  _Where the fuck did you get a machine gun?_ but he figures he’ll probably just kill the guy and steal it anyway.

“Where did you come from?” the guy asks, jerking the gun forward and almost touching Louis’ nose.  Louis moves his mouth to answer, but the guy beats him to it.  “Give me all your food.”

He hears Zayn cough up his guts off to the side before he speaks.  “We don’t have any food, man.”

“ _Liar!"_ he yells, bringing the gun to touch Louis’ nose gently.

Jesus, why is the guy only focused on shooting  _him_?  Zayn is literally right  _there_.

Louis slowly sits up, the barrel of the gun following his every move.

“Listen,” he starts, as he slowly begins shifting on his feet in order to stand up.  “We’ll give you our food, alright?”

For a moment, he sees a slight sense of gratification flash across the guy’s face, because he probably thinks he’s sufficiently scared Louis.  Little does he know, Louis has murdered guys like him for breakfast, and he hasn’t got a single frightened bone in his body.  He is the almighty and powerful  _Louis_ , for goodness’ sake.  He’s legitimately gotten people to bow down at his feet before.

Louis’ eyes shift to some point beyond his head, and when the guy lets his guard down for just a second to see what he’s looking at, Louis takes that as his opportunity.  In one swift motion, he rips the gun from the guy’s hand, smacking it to the ground, before taking his arm and twisting it in a way he has learned is one hundred percent guaranteed to break it.  The wails of agony from the guy as Louis holds his twisted arm from behind are music to his ears, and Louis grins as he holds him for just a little while longer before letting go.

Instantly, the guy falls to the ground in agonizing pain, and Louis quickly moves to grab the gun he had smacked to the side.

He barks one last order to Zayn before turning around.  “Finish him.”

His feet are mighty quick as he dashes off, holding the machine gun in his grasp and feeling liberated.   _That’ll_ teach whoever that was to shoot his ship out of the sky.

Louis had  _seriously_  put a lot of time into making that thing though.  He’ll try not to be too sad about it.

He doesn’t ever slow down as he runs; not to check if Zayn has caught up, not to catch his breath—not for  _anything_.  He’s not going to risk the tiny possibility that the guy somehow had gotten away and is now on his way to murder Louis.

Also, the fucker obviously came from an area where there are more people and weapons, because who the fuck just has a  _machine gun_ these days?  Louis is going to find where he came from, and he is going to kill all of the others in order to keep everything to himself.  It only makes sense.

As he continues darting on quick feet, he begins to smell the scent of meat—sweet, cooked  _meat_ —and the burning of fire.  He  _knows_  he’s hit the jackpot now.

The little glimmer of light in the distance is enough to inspire Louis to keep running as fast as he can, and the nearer he gets, the easier it is to see that there is clearly a fire burning large and bright.

He feels like he’s struck gold as he nears his destination.  He can see actual  _people_ , moving around, talking with each other, eating around the fire.  It seems they’ve got a little community thing going on; there are numerous crappy sheds surrounding the fire, along with what looks like a large tent off to the side.  Once he’s fairly close, he notices that the fire is  _huge_ , and there seems to be a handful of different guys occupying the settlement.

He takes cover behind a bush and crouches down, watching them from afar, although still close enough for the brilliance of the fire to nearly damage his eyesight.  Some animal that Louis can’t identify is twirling above the fire, and they seem to be stuffing their faces with food as they move around one another.  As Louis continues to scan the area with his eyes, he also sees fucking  _fruit,_ and lots of it.  He’s also not sure, but he’s pretty certain there is an abundance of water that they’re drinking from, and it looks  _clean_.  It’s almost identical to The City water.  Holy shit.

 _This_  is probably the reason he hasn’t gotten many decent hunts lately.  These fuckers are hogging  _everything_.

“ _Jesus_ ,” he hears from behind him, and he immediately grips his gun tight as he turns around.

A sigh is released from his lips when he sees that it’s Zayn, slowly approaching as he pants and heaves wildly.

“Shut the  _fuck_ up,” Louis whispers sharply, before moving to hastily pull Zayn down along with him.

“I’m in pain,” Zayn breathes.

“Shut up,” Louis replies.  “Look at this.  They’re literally feasting.  Without us.”

Zayn’s eyes widen as well as he looks at the spectacle in front of them.  “How did they get so much fruit?”

“No idea,” Louis says.  “But it’s about to be ours.”  He ignores the way Zayn glares at the side of his face.  “Just have to wipe them all out and then this is ours, Zayn.  We’ll probably be good for a whole  _week_.”

Zayn shifts his eyes back forward, his irises burning from the brightness of the fire.  “Sounds nice…”

They both remain quiet for a moment, and Louis hopes Zayn is daydreaming about sleeping in tents instead of caves, just like he is.

“Why can’t we just…share?” Zayn asks quietly, and immediately, Louis lets out an annoyed grunt.

“For Jesus  _fuck_ , Z,” Louis groans.  “That’s not the way things are.”

Zayn looks at him questioningly, and Louis groans again.

“Natural selection?  Have you never read a book before?” Louis asks.  “How many times do I have to tell you that the era of morals is over?”

“I know, but—“

“And seriously, Zayn?” Louis interrupts.   “You literally  _just_  killed a guy and you wanna talk to me about making nice with—“

“What the fuck are you guys doing here?”

Both Zayn and Louis’ eyes shoot up to where the foreign voice came from, and Louis would be lying if he says his heartbeat doesn’t stop for just a second.  It’s  _only_  from the surprise of being interrupted, though.

A fairly muscular guy with olive skin is staring down at them, his eyes piercing as he awaits their answer.  Both of them have no idea of what to say, but Louis is cooking something up in his mind.

The guy seems to give up on waiting for an answer as he aggressively grabs them both by the backs of their cargo jackets and practically drags them to the central area, despite all of their kicking and scratching.  As they come into plain view and all the guys start to shift their attention to them, Louis recalls the things he has in his pockets that fortunately,  _weren’t_  destroyed by the ship crash.  He’s quite sure he has at least two pocketknives, a few mini arrows, and only one microbomb (it’s this teeny, tiny little speck that can blow up an entire settlement if he throws it.  He doesn’t think he’ll use it now, though.  It would be much too messy, with all the blood flying everywhere and stuff).

He’s kicked out of his thoughts (literally) when the tip of some guy’s foot harshly hits his side, and he looks up to find that this is a different guy, and— _all_ of them are slowly making their way to the center by the fire, seemingly prepared to attack.  The gun gets snatched out of his hands in the blink of an eye, faster than he can even register it.

“He has Liam’s gun!” the guy says before kicking him again, and Louis clutches his side and seriously contemplates throwing his microbomb and getting the fuck out of here.

“They  _killed_  Liam!” another one shouts, causing the others to fill with rage as they continue to yell and kick at him and Zayn.

The shadows of about twelve men cast over the bodies of Louis and Zayn, and Louis thinks for a moment that this might actually be it.  He, Louis, the king of survival, might actually die because of some douchebag named Liam that decided to shoot his ship out of the sky.

“We—we didn’t kill Liam!” Zayn yells, and Louis looks over to find him scooting away from all of the guys as best he can, pure terror in his eyes.  He puts his hands up in a surrendering fashion, shaking his head.  “We  _didn’t_  kill him!”

The kicks cease.

Louis tries not to smirk at the fact that Zayn is being smart and actually utilizing his God given gift of  _lying_.   _This_  is why Louis keeps him.

Although they seem uncertain now, some of them appear to be unaffected as their nostrils flare with anger.  Louis might just pull his knife out of his pocket and get it over with, but he’s not sure he can get away with handling all of them one by one.

Zayn’s voice is nearly pleading as the guys corner him.  “I  _swear—“_

“He didn’t.”

Every single head turns in the direction of the words, including Louis’, and his eyebrows furrow with heightened confusion.

He’s not sure if his eyes are deceiving him, or if he actually sees the guy that  _shot the S.S. Louis out of the sky_ , walking up to the settlement, his left hand clutching his right arm tightly as he winces.

All faces go blank, except Louis’, because he’s pretty sure he’s wearing the expression of a man who is about to set everything on fire.  He glares at Zayn, but the boy doesn’t even receive it, because he’s staring at the figure of Liam as he approaches and the boys begin to pat him on the back and aid him.

Louis quickly goes back into faux frightened mode, gesturing at Liam as a grin grows on his face.  “ _See_?  We were—we were just returning his gun.  He dropped it.  Isn’t that right, Zayn?”

Zayn takes a moment to catch on, the imbecile, but he eventually does as he nods his head.  “Yeah.”

“What happened to your  _arm_?” another guy asks, fists already beginning to tighten as he stares at Liam with concern.

Louis closes his eyes for a moment, accepting that these are probably his last few seconds of being alive.

“I fell.”

Louis opens one eye, completely thrown off guard.

Welp, this turned out great for him.

“I guess I dropped my gun in the process,” Liam says as he comes over, occasionally grimacing in pain as he offers his hand out to Zayn.  “Leave them alone.  They did nothing.”  Zayn grabs onto his hand and slowly gets up, his eyes wide and irritatingly curious.

“Well, we need to treat you,” one of them says.  “Go into shed number two.”

Liam nods his head in understanding as he releases Zayn’s hand, and although it’s pretty subtle, Louis definitely notices the threatening glare Liam sends his way before he walks over to one of the sheds.

The boys finally start to disperse, leaving Louis and Zayn be, although still throwing uncertain glances their way.  Since no one cared to help  _Louis_  up, he helps himself up, dusting off his pants as he blinks boredly at Zayn.   He gets close enough to the boy so that no one will hear him.

“You being a pussy actually saved us for once,” Louis mutters, before shoving past him and skipping over to the messy arrangement of basil leaves and various fruits.

“So…” Louis says, fairly loudly in order to get everyone’s attention.  “Now that we’ve established this trust…this  _sacred_  bond, I think you guys owe us a little.”  He pops a few grapes into his mouth as eyes linger on him, and he tries not to pass out from the amazing feeling of sweetness swishing around in his mouth.

One boy comes directly up to Louis, crossing his arms firmly and puffing up his chest.  He has dirty blonde hair, along with a faint streak of mud along the side of his face.  His t-shirt can barely even be called a t-shirt with how much it’s ripped up, but then again, there’s not a single person here whose clothes  _aren’t_  ripped up to some extent.  He just seems…messier.

“We don’t even know you,” he says sternly.

Zayn comes up next to him, flashing the boy a cordial grin.  “Well, I’m Zayn, and this is—“

“I’m uh—I’m Steve,” Louis cuts in, subtly nodding at Zayn.  His name is a pretty big deal because of the many things he’s done in the past, so exposing himself would pretty much be suicide.

“We haven’t eaten in  _days_ ,” Louis states, even though he knows it’s an exaggeration.

The guy’s expression doesn’t seem to soften at all as he maintains his hard stance.

“We’ve been looking for food for so long, so this is practically the motherland,” Louis says.

“Steve.  Zayn,” the guy starts, nodding at the both of them.  “You can’t just show up and help yourself to whatever you like.  That’s not how this works.”

“Then how  _does_  it work?” Zayn asks.

“You have to talk to Harry.”

 _Oh_.  So there’s a tough guy he has to talk to?  He actually has to stoop down to some level of inferiority in order to get some damn  _food_?

That’ll have to change, because Louis is the only guy that gets to be top dog.  Well, that probably won’t matter when he gets rid of all of them, but still.   _No one_  is ranked above him,  _ever_.

“Direct me to this big and bad  _Harry_ , if you will,” Louis says, mirroring the guy in front of him and crossing his arms.

The guy says nothing else as he turns around, Louis and Zayn following hesitantly behind him.  On the way to wherever the fuck they’re going, the guy, who later claims his name is Niall, informs them on where the different sheds are set up, where they go when an attack from The City begins, where the “emergency stuff” is, and all that.  They seem to have an actual  _system_ going on here.  Why hadn’t Louis found this place sooner?

They finally get to the end of the settlement when they stop right in front of the large, faded green tent Louis had seen earlier.  Niall motions for them to stay back, and then he swiftly walks through the entrance.  Louis huffs and rolls his eyes, reflecting on how ridiculous all of this is.

Zayn taps his feet and avoids eye contact as Louis continues to stare straight ahead.

Niall eventually comes back out, closing the tent behind himself.  “He’s busy.”

“Oh,  _fuck_  that,” Louis mutters, pushing past Niall and nearly ripping the tent open.

His steps slow down as he enters once he realizes how spacious it actually is inside.  The first thing he sees as he looks around are weapons.  Tons and tons of weapons of all kinds and varieties.  A lot of them seem to be handmade, and Louis ogles at them for a bit as his eyes scan the room.

His eyes then settle upon the figure of some guy actually sitting on what looks like a  _mattress_  on the floor, sharpening some spear-looking weapon with a knife.  He has fairly long, wild, curly brown hair, dark circles under his eyes, and as Louis comes closer, he sees that the guy’s fingers contain severe calluses as he continues to work on the spear.  They both lock eyes for a few seconds as Louis takes the last few steps in order to be standing close enough to the boy, and Louis rocks on his feet.

“So…” Louis starts, placing his hands on his hips as the guy blinks at him.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and the raw deepness of his voice startles Louis a bit, but he definitely doesn’t let it show.

He looks behind himself for a moment, expecting to see Zayn and Niall, but finding no one else.  He figures Niall must’ve forced Zayn to stay behind.

“What is  _up_  with you people and the  _what are you doing here_ ’s and the  _who are you”_ s?” Louis asks, walking over to inspect a shiny handheld gun that’s hung up high.  “Jesus, I’m a human  _being_ , just like you.  Don’t treat me like a stranger.”

Harry gradually pauses his action of sharpening the weapon and holds it in his hand, his face extremely solid and stern as he stares at Louis with creased brows.  There’s silence as Louis grins sweetly at him, and then the guy stands up, and Louis prepares to attack at any moment.  His eyes remain focused on the spear that’s still in Harry’s hand.

“Get the  _fuck_  out,” Harry says.

Louis opens his mouth a few times in shock.  “ _Harry_.  I’m literally  _begging_  for a place to stay.  I need to survive.”

Harry stares blankly at him, and now Louis can’t tell if he’s angry or lost.

Louis moves away from the hanging weapons, playing with the tips of his fingers as he steps a bit closer, but not  _too_  close (he’s trying not to get stabbed, thank you very much).

“Just for a few days,” Louis says.

They just look at each other for a moment, and Louis genuinely can’t see any reason for why this guy is the go-to for executive decisions.  He literally has the face of prepubescent child—he’s  _anything_  but intimidating.

Harry’s word comes out blunt and short.  “No.”

This is where Louis loses is it, and he shoots forward and closes the space between them in half a second as he places his hand on the spear Harry’s holding, his grip stone cold and unmoving.  He can feel Harry trying to break out of his grasp, but Louis successfully manages to turn the spear so that it’s facing Harry’s stomach, poking at his shirt.  He breathes harshly, his nostrils flaring as he now glares at Louis with infuriated eyes.

“Listen,” Louis growls, his voice at a scarily low level.  “I’m not asking you.  I’m  _telling_  you.  If you don’t let us stay here, it’s going to be tragic when your minions find out you’ve been killed with your own weapon.”

They stand there for a moment, wrists tight, the veins of their arms fiercely evident as Louis holds the spear in the direction of Harry’s abdomen with everything he has.  The air of the tent is thick with tension as they stare each other down and Louis continues to use his utmost strength.

Louis finally releases him harshly, locking eyes with him in order to understand that the guy is on the same page.

Louis is aware that Harry has many reasons to stab him right now, but instead, the harsh look slowly gets wiped off of his face and replaced with something more apprehensive.  He finally takes a step back, tossing the spear onto the bed.

“Impressive,” is all he says, and then he gets back down on the mattress and seems to…continue what he had been doing before Louis busted in.

Well…Louis takes that as a yes.

He leaves the tent in order to escape before Harry changes his mind about anything, and he doesn’t even acknowledge Zayn and Niall before going over to where all the food is and beginning to fill the contents of his stomach.  He ignores all the looks being sent his way, because he doesn’t give a flying fuck about what these guys think—he’s fucking  _starving._  They’ll all be dead by tomorrow anyway.

Eventually (and timidly), Zayn joins him in eating, and they spend the rest of the night there as the boys start to finally ignore their presence.

It’s late into the night after Louis has gotten done taking a piss in some bush and a lot of the boys are in their sheds, when he comes back over to the settlement to find Zayn sitting on the grass near the fire.  Talking to Liam.

The sides of their faces are illuminated as they converse, and Liam’s arm is now hoisted up with some kind of dirty white wrapping.  They nod their heads at each other lazily, and Louis doesn’t even try to come off as subtle when he stalks over and grabs Zayn by the arm, jerking him upward.  Zayn is startled as he scrambles behind Louis, continuing to be pulled along until they are at the edge of the settlement, unlit by the fire and amongst the trees and bushes.

“ _What_ _?”_ Zayn says, a bit too harshly for Louis’ taste.

He brings his voice down to the lowest level possible as he leans in closer to Zayn.  “Do you think there’s a possibility that some of the magnara posion from my ship survived?”

Even in the dark, Louis can see that Zayn rolls his eyes.  “The thing is completely  _destroyed_.  If anything, it’s scattered over the ground and completely useless now.”

Louis stomps his feet on the ground tiredly.  “I  _made_  that poision.  It took me  _months_!” he whines.

“Well,” Zayn says.  “Nothing we can do about it now.”

“Maybe if I go and check, I can still find some left over,” Louis says, pretty much talking to himself now.  “I can gather as much as I can, sprinkle it in their water supply.  They’ll all be dead by morning.”

Zayn huffs.  “Can we just…not?  Just this one time?”

Louis breathes sharply through his nose as he suppresses the urge to strangle him.  “ _No!_   I’m not sharing all of this shit with _thirteen_ other people!  Stop asking  _stupid_  questions!”

“They gave us _food_ —“

“Well, they shouldn’t have,” Louis spits.  “God, why are you being such a pussy?”

“Having normal human compassion doesn’t make me a pussy—“

“Yes it  _does_ ,” Louis hisses, viciously using both hands to shove Zayn away and knocking the breath out of him.  He barely recovers from it before Louis shoves him again.  “I’m getting tired of your  _shit_ , Zayn!  Why the  _fuck_  didn’t you kill Liam?”

Zayn attempts to seize Louis’ wrists as he breathes heavily.  “I—I tried, but I couldn’t.”

Louis sets his jaw tight as he balls up his fists, Zayn nearly cowering under his gaze.  “You  _couldn’t_ _?”_

“I just—“ Zayn starts, rubbing a hand down the back of his neck.  “I had him pinned down, and I was about to choke him, but then we held eye contact…and I just couldn’t do it.”

Louis grips the collar of Zayn’s jacket, jerking him forward as he growls in his face.  “Listen, Zayn.  This isn’t the time for  _friendship,_ damn it.  Either do as I say—kill when I say to fucking  _kill_ —or get the  _fuck_  out of my face.”

Zayn breathes for a moment as he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, and his voice is desperately pleading when he speaks.  “I don’t want you to kill him!”

Louis shrugs.  “Well guess what, I  _am_!  I’m killing all of them  _tonight_ , so I guess you won’t get to make those friendship bracelets after all.”

“Louis  _stop_ —“

“If you wanna be against me so bad, just join them,” Louis says, gesturing at the entire area right behind Zayn.  He takes steady steps backward as he continues to shoo the boy away.  “Join them, and I guess I’ll have to eliminate you too.”

Zayn stands in place as Louis continues to back away, and Louis can see the watery glimmer of his eyes in the nighttime.

“And I won’t care,” Louis continues.

“Wow,” Zayn breathes, shaking his head before turning around and walking back toward the settlement.

Louis quirks one eyebrow up, because wow, he is  _impressed_.  Zayn is willing to  _die_  for a guy he literally just met.  That is truly wild.

He shrugs again as he turns around and starts on his journey to where his ship had been blown to smithereens.  It’s quite the journey, and Louis keeps reaching into his pocket for his weapons every time he so much as hears a whistle of wind.

He eventually makes it, and he can admit, his heart hurts at the tragic sight of the _S.S. Louis_ , now unidentifiable as its pieces remain dispersed.  Not a single weapon is even intact and adequate for use.  He goes over to where the small wooden cases of poison are completely smashed, and he crouches down, feeling admittedly defeated as he looks at the mess beneath him.  It’s too dark to even see if he can gather anything from the ground.

Just when he’s given up and is ready to start back toward the settlement, something catches his eye on a piece of one of the wings that detached from the ship.  He crouches down again to inspect the faded dust upon the wing, and slowly, a smirk starts to grow on his face.  Magnara poison.

He quickly sweeps as much of it as he can into his hands, making sure to keep his palms closed as he makes his way back to the settlement.  It’s an even longer journey, because he has to be careful to make sure he doesn’t lose any more of the poison than he already has.

When he finally reaches his destination, he doesn’t see a single person out of their sheds and surrounding the fire as he steps into the area.  He also can’t hear any talking or movement, so he takes that as a sign that everyone is either resting or asleep.

He quickly goes over to the water supply, finding the (surprisingly impressive) manmade water filter (Seriously, how does that even work?  Using leaves and fishnets to filter water?  What?).  He continues to peer over his shoulder as he sprinkles the powder into the giant wooden crate of water, feeling more devious than ever as he watches it disintegrate.  Once he’s finished, he feels sufficiently gratified as he wipes his hands and walks away from the now tainted water.

He taps his foot against the ground as he wonders what he’s supposed to do now.  Is he supposed to wait?  Everyone’s asleep, so that could take hours.

He doesn’t even ponder before heading for the only tent in the settlement, pushing through the entrance and trying not to gape again at how nice it is inside.

“You again,” Harry says.

Louis’ a bit thrown off to find him still awake, now laid on his back as he continues to carve a now  _different_  weapon held out over him.

“It’s me,” Louis says, taking slow steps around the tent.  “Why are you still awake?”

“I have things to do.”

“Vague, I love it,” Louis says.  He walks across the tent toward the mattress, before squatting down to Harry’s level and setting his elbow on his thigh.  Harry doesn’t even glance at him as he continues his tedious work.

Louis is going to get to the bottom of this.

“So Harry…” Louis starts, taking a moment to straighten out the sleeve of his jacket.  “Why are you the head of everything around here?”

Harry scoffs, which is probably the first real emotion Louis has seen out of him since arriving.  “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, look at you,” Louis says, gesturing at him.  “You’ve got the biggest shelter.  A bed—which probably  _none_  of the other boys have.  It seems that they go to  _you_  for leadership.”

Harry breathes exhaustedly as he continues to move his hands.  “Steve—that’s your name, right?”

“Yep.”

“It’s about trust.”

Louis blinks for a moment, his face blank.  “What?”

“They trust me,” Harry says.

“Why?” Louis asks, almost defensively.  “Is it because you’re the strongest or something?”  He chuckles just a little, and he’s not meaning to come off as rude, but he’s pretty sure he does with the way Harry’s eyes viciously shoot in his direction.

“No shade or anything,” Louis says, shaking his head.  “It’s just hard to believe all of this  _trust_  bullshit.  The fact that you guys haven’t killed each other yet completely baffles me.”

“You don’t kill a member of the pack.”

“ _The pack_?” Louis asks, now starting to lose control of his giggles.  “Right…I’ll stick to being independent and fighting for myself.  I’ll be out of your hair in a few days, promise.”

“Why don’t you just leave now if you’re so independent?”

Louis stares at him, trying not to take offense to the way Harry is subtly coming at him.  He also hears a bit of noise coming from outside the tent, but it isn't distracting enough to divert his attention from the subject.  “I guess you’ve got a bit of a point.”

“’Course I do,” Harry says.  “Everybody needs somebody else once in a while.  No one survives purely off of being independent.”

“Okay, I get it.”

“No you don’t,” Harry says, and Louis purses his lips together, a little confused as to why Harry is suddenly making inferences about him.  As though he  _knows_  him.

“You don’t get it, and I don’t think you ever will, Louis.”

Louis nearly chokes on his own saliva at the sound of his real name, just as he hears footsteps quickly approaching the tent, followed by the entrance being pulled open violently

Harry sets his things aside as he sits up, giving Louis some final words before getting off the mattress.  “Cut the crap.”

Louis’ left speechless as Harry gets up and walks over to the guy who is now peering into the tent, looking rather uncomfortable.

“Um…Harry,” he starts as Harry approaches, awaiting what he has to say.  “There’s something”—he swallows with slight difficulty—“wrong with Ricardo.”

Louis’ breath comes to a halt as he keeps his gaze set on the entrance of the tent, where the guy is now breathing heavily, and Harry is standing completely still.  They exchange a few murmured words of which Louis can’t hear, and then Harry quickly leaves out of the tent as he follows the guy.

Louis gulps before rising up as well, making his way toward the exit just to save his own ass.

A few more of the boys are out of their sheds now, completely circling the area as a guy who Louis’ fairly sure is Ricardo, is being carried by two of them.  His skin is turning faint shades of purple as he makes nauseating sounds, and Louis’ pretty sure the next step is vomiting, if he remembers correctly.

Everyone looks absolutely devastated, and Louis’ just relieved he doesn't see Zayn anywhere.

The boys slowly lower Ricardo to the ground with desolate looks on their faces, and when he finally stops making pained sounds, the boys start to look a little more hopeful.  As if on cue, he begins vomiting wildly, and something gets fed to him by Harry that is apparently supposed to be some kind of medicine.

“How could this happen?” one of the guys asks as he brushes a stressful hand through his hair.

All of them are practically already mourning, some even tearing up as the depressing debacle takes place in front of them.  Even Louis joins in on some of the action as he rubs his palm over his forehead.

“God, this is horrible,” he says, using his most dramatic tone of voice, and a few of them even nod along with him in agreement.

Upon realizing he’s probably about to die soon, the two guys carry him away into the darkness of the night, and all of the boys proceed to take a knee.  Louis does so as well, even though he’s a few seconds late.  As they remain near the ground, eyes casted downward, Louis can’t help but peer at his surroundings and wonder if this is actually happening.  If these people are actually taking time out of their lives to mourn over someone dying, as if this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day.  It’s a god damn part of  _life_.

His eyes continue to maneuver the area until they fall upon Harry, and when he finds that the boy is glowering directly at him, he quickly averts his attention downward.  He continues to feel the pressure of Harry’s sharp eyes on him, but he tries his best to ignore it.

When they all finally stand up again after what feels like five eternal minutes, Louis stretches out his limbs and yawns, very much ready to hit the hay.

He doesn’t even get to reflect on that thought however, before a firm hand is gripping his forearm and tugging him toward some area outside of the settlement.  When Louis directs his eyes in order to see who the fuck this person is who has decided they want to lose their life, he isn’t surprised.  Of course, who else could it be that’s manhandling him, other than the great and all powerful Harry?

Once they reach the trees, Louis’ unprepared for when Harry shoves him into the tree trunk, pinning him against it, before reaching up one hand to curl around his neck.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Louis breathes, already starting to wheeze a bit as Harry’s fist gradually grows tighter.

Louis struggles with both of his hands to get Harry’s grip off of him, but nothing works.  “We don’t kill members of the pack, remember?” he says through a voice that’s barely there.

“You’re not one of us.”  His fist tightens further, most likely forming bruises and sufficiently affecting airflow.

“I didn’t do it,” Louis breathes, giving up on trying to shove him off as he begins seeing stars.

Harry presses his neck further into the trunk with a jerk of his hand.  “ _Swear_.”

“I swear I didn’t do it!” Louis croaks, his view occupied by the dark figure of Harry looming over him as everything begins to fade to black.

It seems that Harry finally releases him just before Louis’ about to check out, and he immediately falls to the ground once he’s free.  He coughs and heaves aggressively as he hears the sound of Harry’s retreating footsteps, and he thinks that maybe there  _is_  a God, because it is truly a miracle that there have been so many close calls in one night.

Louis waits a little as the oxygen starts to enter back into his head, and then he sits back, leaning himself against the tree.  He isn’t ready to go back just yet, on the off chance that Harry is waiting for him at the tent with a machete.

He doesn’t plan to take a nap as he sits there, but he does, and when he wakes up, all is quiet and dark.  He spits out a bit of blood before pushing himself up to his feet, stumbling a little as he makes his way back over to the fire that is now smaller than it was before.

Silent feet walk over to the water supply, and Louis can’t help the frown that grows on his face as he takes the wooden crate and dumps all of the water out—every last drop of it.  Can’t risk another person dying and Harry’s fist around his neck again (Choking though?  What a weak move.).  He sets it back under the filter that continues to drip and lets out a deep breath before walking away.

He closes his eyes for a second and braces himself, prays to God that Harry is asleep, before entering through the tent.  When he opens his eyes, thankfully, the guy  _is_  asleep; eyes rested as he lays on one side of his shriveled up mattress.

Louis will be damned if he sleeps in a shed tonight, and Harry has actual  _sheets,_  so Louis isn’t going to pass up this once in a lifetime opportunity.  Also, he wants to rid Harry of any superiority complex he probably has from being the leader of everything—he wants to let him know that he  _doesn’t_  get to have his own bed.  He’s not special.

Louis flicks him off as he silently gets into the bed, and within seconds of laying his head against the mattress, he’s falling into a more peaceful sleep than he’s gotten in months.

When he wakes up, he feels like the world is moving around him.

Maybe the effects of Harry strangling him are a bit delayed, and now he’s actually in heaven.  That would be  _amazing;_ dying in his sleep has always been how he wanted to go out.

When he slowly blinks his eyes open and the first thing he sees are bright, fluffy clouds, he’s certain this  _is_  in fact, the afterlife.  He blinks a few more times, relishing in the foreign feeling of tranquility, because it’s rare that he ever gets a moment like this.

He’s brought out of the moment when he turns his head to the right, and his  _cheek_  touches  _water_.

He moves like lightning when he sits up, eyes darting around wildly as he registers the setting around him.  He’s sat on top of a—what is it, some kind of manmade raft?  It’s made of fucking sticks, twigs, and branches, and—oh yeah.

It’s in the middle of the  _fucking_ ocean.

“What the…” Louis starts, breathless as he continues to look around.

The water stretches for what seems like miles, not a trace of land anywhere to be seen.

The final straw is acknowledged when he realizes there’s a person laying down in the raft next to him, sound and asleep.

Harry.

“ _Noooo!”_  Louis yells, for so long and so loud that it echoes for quite a while.  He gulps as he pulls at the twigs underneath him, before bringing his knees to his chest, then attempting to pull out his hair, and proceeding to scratch at his skin.

He’s not wearing his jacket anymore.  They took his  _fucking_  jacket.  That cargo jacket contained the few weapons he had left, and now he has nothing but this rusty, faded t-shirt and raggedy pants with empty pockets.

He looks to the side as Harry begins to shift around a bit, and wow.  He actually  _has_  his jacket still on, and there’s a small sack next to him that seems to be full of arrows.

What the  _fuck_  is going on?

He continues to freak out as Harry stirs awake, and he watches the boy rub at his forehead as his mind takes a moment to realize where he’s woken up.

Louis can tell he’s finally awake when he says “Fuck”.

“ _Fuck_  is right!” Louis yells.  “What is going  _on_?”

Harry seems oddly calm as he sits up, closing his eyes as he wraps his arms around his knees.

“They kicked us out,” he says.

Louis’ mouth remains agape as he struggles to understand why Harry is so serene.  “Why would they do that?”

Harry finally opens his eyes, shrugging as he stares ahead.  “There could be many reasons.”

“Can you say those reasons?  Do I have to spoon feed you questions?”

Harry shoots him a look before letting one of his legs down.  “I knew this was going to happen eventually.  It happened to the last leader.  I should’ve known.”  A defeated sigh escapes his lips as he looks down at his lap, and Louis is itching to remind him that there’s no time for feeling disappointed in themselves.  They’re on a  _raft_ , floating aimlessly in the middle of the ocean and drifting toward who knows  _where_.

“Why would they take  _me_  too?” Louis asks, pressing his fingers to his temples.  “God, if they secretly hated you, why couldn’t they just leave me out if it?  Holy  _shit_.”

“I dunno, maybe because you clearly murdered Ricardo last night.”

“I told you, I  _didn’t_.”

Harry shrugs him off as he peeks into the bag they’d so politely left him.  “It’s also probably because we’re the strongest.”

“Of  _course_  I’m the strongest,” Louis says, as though it’s the most obvious statement.  “Why do I have to be  _punished_  for it?”

Harry smacks his teeth, seemingly starting to grow thoroughly frustrated.  “Can you stop acting like you’re so innocent?  You have a  _long_  list of things you deserve to be punished for.”

Louis stares at him wordlessly, observing his curly hair blowing every which way as the raft continues to move slowly.

“I’ve heard about you.  You’re the notorious Louis,” Harry says as he digs around the pockets of his jacket.  He appears pleased to find a single switchblade placed in there.  “You killed off your entire pack without remorse.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Louis says.  “I didn’t kill off  _everybody_.  I spared Zayn.”

“And look where that got us.”

“What is  _that_  supposed to mean?”

Harry rolls his eyes exhaustedly.  “It means he probably helped.”

Louis grinds his teeth together as Harry locks eyes with him, and Louis decides then and there that he hates everything about him.  He shuffles over to his side of the raft and pushes him off, nice and easy, watching him fall over the side of it.  His body completely submerges in the water, even after his hands scramble to grip at the raft, and Louis makes himself comfortable with all of his newfound space. 

The raft isn’t big enough for two people anyway.  It was going to happen eventually.

He crawls over to dig through the sack of arrows and see if they’d given him anything else, but he finds nothing.  He’s still bitter however, because they obviously cared about Harry to some extent if they were willing to give him some weapons before sending him off into the ocean.  Wasn’t it  _Louis_  who had returned Liam’s gun after the boy fell in the woods?  God, where was the compassion?

He’s in the middle of trying to figure out how he’s going to survive when the water violently splashes next to him, liquid flying everywhere as Louis struggles to catch his breath.  Harry procures a solid grip onto the edge of the raft, almost tipping it over as he emerges from the water, fighting to get back on top of it as he now appears to be a sopping wet mess.  His hair is limp and damp against his face as he flicks Louis off.

“Fuck you.”

“How did you…”

“The first thing I’m doing when we land is killing you.”

Louis puts his hands up, scooting back to his side of the raft.  “Fair enough.  Why not just do it now, though?”

“I need someone to help me row this,” Harry replies, before breaking two large sticks away from the raft.  He spends a considerable amount of time using his blade to carve the ends of them out, and he eventually hands one to Louis with pruned fingers.  “Begin.”

Rowing with giant sticks, carved to somewhat resemble paddles, isn’t exactly efficient, and it’s a lot more work than Louis wants to put in right now, but he complies, because he wants to get to shore as well in order to be freed from this ridiculous brat.

They don’t even know where they’re going (well, Harry claims he does but Louis isn’t buying it) but they continue rowing, maintaining complete silence as their arms move rigorously.

Louis’ pretty sure about a million hours pass before he finally sees some kind of shore, and he lets out the ultimate breath of relief.  He won’t die after all.

It’s evening when they near land, and the sun has almost gone down.  The sunset is in full effect, but Louis doesn’t take the time to appreciate it, because he doesn’t have the luxury of doing that anymore.  Doesn’t have time to treasure the little beauties of life like a fool, because he constantly has to focus on more important things, like surviving.

It seems Harry has forgotten his vow to end Louis’ life once they get off of the raft, because he immediately begins shrugging off his jacket. 

He sets his bag aside and starts to take off his muscle t-shirt before ringing it out in the water.  Louis stands off to the side, simply watching as the boy actually takes the time to wash his face, rinse out his mouth, tie half of his hair up with a damn  _leaf stem_ —pretty much doing all the unnecessary stuff that they definitely don’t need to be worrying about right now.

Louis’ eyes run over Harry’s torso for a moment, and he seems to have  _some_ type of definition in his abs.  He’s no muscle man, but he obviously keeps fit.  Louis’ body is better though.  Louis is better than him in many ways.

This thought urges Louis to casually go over to where Harry had dropped his things, moving as quietly as a squirrel through the woods.  Harry doesn’t stir as he remains hovered over the water, probably thinking Louis had gone off and found some place to be by himself.

Louis reaches down and grips Harry’s sack by the strap, and the arrows bump against one another a bit.  He completely freezes, hoping Harry hadn’t heard the faint sound.  When he’s sure that the boy is oblivious to what he’s doing, Louis contemplates taking the switchblade from the pocket of his jacket, but decides against it.  He’d rather take the arrows and be safe than go for the switchblade as well and be fucked.

He stands up slowly, the sack in his hand as he takes slow, steady steps backward.  Harry seems to be contemplating life as he now sits at the shore and simply looks ahead.

Silly Harry.  There’s no  _time_  for daydreaming and thinking about  _life_.  That’s how you give people the perfect opportunity to steal from you.

Once Louis’ sure he’s out of earshot, he turns around in order to find somewhere to hide the sack.  Panic starts to settle inside of him once he hears Harry getting up from the water, so he thinks fast, throwing the bag into the first hole he sees in the ground before starting back toward the shore.  Harry’s back is still turned when Louis arrives, and he tries not to sigh too loudly with alleviation.

Harry stretches out his limbs before reaching down for his shirt and pulling it back on.  He turns around to walk over to his jacket, but he pauses in his steps for a moment upon realizing Louis is still there.

“Oh.  You’re still here.”

“Yep,” Louis replies, resting his elbow against a palm tree.  “I’ve been standing here the whole time.”

Harry shrugs his jacket on, and he doesn’t seem to notice something is missing, so that’s good.

It’s practically nighttime once again, save for a very slim view of the sun along the horizon.

“So are you going to spend all day gussying up or what?” Louis asks.

Harry ignores him as he starts on his feet, determination spread over his face as he stalks past Louis.  Louis smirks before following behind, just so he won’t seem suspicious when Harry realizes it’s gone.

They only walk a few more feet before Harry comes to a halt, feeling around himself for a while.  “Wait, where’s my…”

His words trail off as he drops his hands to his sides, and then he slowly turns around to face Louis. 

Louis blinks at him innocently, faking a complete obliviousness as to what’s going on.  “What?”

Harry’s hands are so quick that they become a blur as he reaches in his pocket for his switchblade, flipping it out in half a second before pointing it at Louis’ neck, backing him all the way into the nearest palm tree.

“Where is it?”

“What are you  _talking_  about?” Louis asks, inching away from the blade as best he can.  He’s going for the neck  _again_?  Harry must really love his neck.

“I’m talking about the  _arrows_ ,” Harry says, pressing one of Louis’ arms into the tree as he continues to hold the blade in place.

“I didn’t fucking take them,” Louis hisses, his Adams apple bobbing.

Harry swallows, a vein nearly bursting out of his head as he grips the blade furiously tight.  The cold from the point of the blade pressing lightly against his skin causes a faint shiver to run through Louis’ entire body.

“I’ll do it,” Harry says lowly, threateningly.

Louis quirks an eyebrow up.  “Oh really, tough guy?  You’ll kill me?”

Harry says nothing, but his expression remains just as hard.

“Go ahead.  Do it,” Louis says.

When five seconds pass and Harry, just like Louis had predicted,  _doesn’t_  do it, Louis snatches the switchblade away, before dashing the few feet towards the ocean and hurling it into the open air with everything he has.  It flies far, disappearing into the sky as Louis heaves and tries not to focus on his hand that’s now dripping tiny amounts of blood.

“What’re you gonna kill me with now, huh?” Louis asks as he turns around, opening his arms wide.

Harry is clearly infuriated as his fists ball up at his sides, his footsteps staggering as they approach Louis.

“What could you’ve used it for anyway?” Louis asks, trying to soften the situation a bit.  “There’s no way you could’ve killed any animal with that thing without it killing you first.”

Harry presses his lips together tightly, obviously containing all of his anger as Louis continues to ramble on.

“Well—any animal that’s  _worth_  killing, like a coyote, or a cheetah.   _Those_  things would look at you crazy if you came up to them and tried to stab them,” Louis says, clasping his hands together.  “I did you a favor.  I also feel safer with the knowledge that I won’t be surprise stabbed.”

“I can stab you with anything,” Harry mutters, before entering back into the sea of trees and leaving Louis behind.

“Good to know,” Louis calls out, cupping his hand over his mouth.  “Where are you going?”

“To start a fire!” Harry calls back.

Louis shifts on his feet a little, searching his mind in order to remember where he’d placed the bag of arrows.

“Okay, well…” Louis calls out as he begins in the direction he remembers he’d thrown them.  “I’m just gonna—I’m gonna go my own way, okay?  Because I work by myself, and I don’t really give a shit about you, in case you didn’t know.”

He gets nothing in response as darkness finally begins to settle around him.  He takes that as his cue to start on his journey to find the arrows, already completely forgetting about the existence of Harry.

He finds the sack after quite a while of searching, and he wastes no time before procuring some extremely remote area of the forest to set up a fire.  After he’s finally got the flame burning and he’s thoroughly warmed up from head to toe, he goes out to hunt himself some dinner.  The hunt goes rather well, if he does say so himself.

He feels thoroughly liberated as he sits upon a rock he’d placed by his fire, eating food he’d caught completely on his own, with the arrows he’d stolen from a guy who’d so foolishly left his belongings unsupervised.  He’s doing what he does best; surviving off of the land, because he’s Louis fucking—well, he’s kind of forgotten what his last name is.  But he is  _still_  Louis, and he’s pretty sure he’s a demigod.

He’s been doing this for what he believes has been eight months now, and most people don’t even last one.  No one can tell him he’s weak, or that he’s a quitter, or that he’s not a  _survivor_.  The only thing anyone can say about him is that he’s mean, but honestly, who the fuck  _cares_?

Harry is probably going to die from starvation due to the fact that he has nothing to hunt with, and Louis is perfectly fine with that.  It’s called survival of the fittest—it’s the natural way of the world, so Louis won’t lose a second of sleep over inevitable happenings.

He remains comforted by the warmth of the fire for as long as the night allows him to, and the only thing that causes the relaxation to come to an end is the fact that little drops of rain begin to fall from the sky.  Louis’ eyes focus purely on the fire as he wipes his mouth with his arm, mentally praying for the fire to be strong enough.  The fire continues to blaze as the rain comes down a bit more, but Louis figures it’s not pouring down hard enough to have any real effect.  

He’s proven wrong when a single rain drop causes the entire fire to go out.

He runs his palm down his face as he sits in complete pitch blackness, realizing that he is now on the outskirts of  _everything_  with no source of light or heat.  The rain continues to come down in tiny droplets—nothing that Louis can’t endure.

He gets down on his knees and begins to try and start up a fire again, but after three failures, he gives up, grabbing the strap of the sack containing the arrows and starting on his way somewhere else.

Just in case the rain picks up speed, he wants to find some type of shelter under a tree so that he doesn’t get wet and die from hypothermia.  He grows frustrated with every attempt he makes at securing a shelter, because it seems that all of the trees are thin; the water continues to seep through them repeatedly.

The rain starts to let up a bit as he continues his journey, but he still wants to find a shelter for future reference.  As he maneuvers through the forest, or the woods, or the island, or  _wherever_  the fuck he is, there is no other sound besides his own footsteps and quick breaths.

It’s when he hears something move within the trees a few minutes later that he completely freezes, gripping his bag of arrows as he darts his eyes around.  It’s too dark to see anything, but he’s more than eager to start shooting blindly if something attacks him.

Once he doesn’t hear anything again, he continues his journey.

It only takes a few steps for him to hear the sound again, and he pauses his movements and reaches into the bag for one of the arrows.

He practically jumps out of his skin when his back bumps into someone else’s, and he’s completely prepared to murder before he turns around, recognizing the silhouette of Harry.

“Why are you creeping up on me?” Louis snaps, his fists positioned out in front of him.

Harry just crosses his arms, shifting on his feet as he faces Louis.  “So you  _did_  take my arrows.”

“I did, now let’s move on,” Louis says, dropping his hands by his sides.  “What are you doing out here?”

“I’m making my way back to the fire I set up,” Harry replies, pointing beyond Louis’ head before proceeding to walk in that direction.

Louis rolls his eyes as he follows behind.  “As  _if_  your fire is still burning.”

“Maybe  _you_  don’t, but I actually know how to make a strong fire.”

Louis doesn’t even offer a rebuttal as he follows behind, because he  _needs_  light.  All the darkness and loneliness is starting to get to him a teeny bit.  He’s not  _scared_ , but he seriously feels like he and Harry are the only people within hundreds of miles, and the thought slightly bothers him.

When they reach the fire, Louis’ eyes quickly go wide with fascination at how big and grand it is, completely unaffected by the rain as it continues to illuminate the forest around it.  There’s leftover food from when he ate, and Louis is salivating at the sight of it, as though he hadn’t eaten just a short while before.

“How…” Louis starts, but he doesn’t speak loud enough, because he doesn’t want Harry to think he’s infatuated with anything he’s done.

Harry turns around once they’ve reached his area, and his arms remain crossed as he stares at Louis with a solid, unwavering expression.  “Leave.”

Louis shakes his head to life as he stares back at Harry, completely thrown off guard by his abrupt hostility.  “Why—“

“You took my fucking arrows, Louis,” Harry starts.  “And you  _lied_  about it.”

Louis purses his lips forward, completely fed up with Harry and all of his annoying values.  “So fucking what?  Has no one ever lied to you before?  Grow the fuck up!”

“You could’ve just told me, and then I’d hunt for the both of us—“

“I hunt for  _myself!_ _”_ Louis exclaims, throwing the bag of arrows on the ground.  “I don’t  _need_  you.  I don’t need  _anyone_  to survive out here!”

Harry’s fingers curl with frustration.  “Yes you  _do_!  What’s so wrong with relying on others for once?”

“I don’t  _care_  about others,” Louis says, his voice cold.  “I care about  _me_ , and yes, if I had the opportunity, I would steal your arrows again, because that’s how much I don’t give a shit about anyone else!”

“What a sad, sad life.”

Louis throws his hands up in anger.  “Says the guy that got thrown out by his own  _team_!”

Harry steps toward him, his jaw tight as his eyes burn into Louis’.  “Shut up.”

“You wanna preach about teamwork and brotherhood, but look where that got you!” Louis shouts, his voice echoing throughout the forest as he gestures around them.

“Louis…”

“ _Nowhere!_   It got your sorry ass  _nowhere!"_

He knew he should’ve seen it coming, but somehow, he doesn’t.  All he feels is the hard pressure of Harry’s fist colliding with the side of his jaw, so forcefully that he’s pretty sure his jawbone dislocates for half a second.  He finds himself on the ground, down on one knee as he steadies himself with a hand in the soil, and he can’t see anything.  Can hardly even hear anything.

He’s in a daze for a moment, and he’s pretty sure he even blacks out as he struggles not to fall flat on the ground and bury his face in the mud.  He spits out copious amounts of blood as he regains his composure, and finally, his mind starts coming back to normal.  He can feel again, he can hear again, and he can sure as hell see again.  Harry’s stood over him, jaw still clenched and fist balled up at his side.

Louis screams like a banshee as he rises to his feet.  “I’m gonna fucking  _kill you!”_

He charges at Harry with full force, tackling the boy to the ground as sparks from the fire continue to fall around them.  The air is filled with curses and grunts as they wrestle over the mud, toppling over one another and trying their best to get some sort of punch in.  Louis doesn’t want to  _just_  get a punch in, however; he wants to murder him.

Louis’ pretty sure he has the lead as he manages to get Harry into a firm chokehold, using his other hand to prepare and break one of Harry’s arms, just like he did Liam.  Harry snaps out of his grasp at the last second, shifting their positions and attempting to pin Louis down (he only succeeds for a second or two), before Louis knocks him over and tries not to wince as he takes another punch in the face.  All of their grappling causes them to end up by some of the rocks, and once Louis has successfully secured his position over Harry, he grips him by his long locks of hair, jerking his head up, only inches away from the hard edge of a fairly large rock.

There’s a moment where they’re both breathing heavily, scratches over their arms and faces, a bruise on Harry’s collar, and probably a gash of blood on Louis’ jaw.

“Just one move and I could crack your skull open,” Louis whispers.

Harry continues to stare into his eyes, and Louis doesn’t know if he’s challenging him or…he just doesn’t know.  Louis continues to grip a chunk of his hair, knowing that all he has to do is smash his face into the rock and get it over with.  He can’t figure out why he won’t just  _do_  it already.

Louis releases him, and he feels that his hands are on a completely different page from his brain, because he’s not entirely sure of why he does that.  He gets up from on top of Harry, and Harry sits up, his eyes lingering on Louis as Louis stands up and dusts his pants off.

“Everyone needs a good wrestle once in a while,” Louis says halfheartedly as he goes over to sit upon the log by the fire.  He continues to feel Harry’s eyes on him a few feet away as the boy continues to sit by the rocks, but he ignores it as he concentrates his vision solely on the details of the fire in front of him.

Harry eventually gets up, but he doesn’t move so abruptly that Louis turns on the defensive mode again.  He quietly comes over to sit by Louis, taking off his jacket that had gotten torn during the fight.  He ties it around his waist as he sits, but Louis continues to stare straight ahead.

They’re quiet for a while, and for once, it’s a peaceful silence between them.  Not one where they’re questioning if one of them is going to kill the other, or one where a question is left unanswered.  Just pure, shared silence.

Louis speaks up after about fifteen minutes, his voice now much softer and raspy than before.

“How did you even hunt?”

Harry slowly shifts to reach for something behind the log, before showing it to Louis.  Louis moves his eyes to see the rocks in Harry's hands that have been carved to become long spears, clearly efficient enough to take down any animal from many feet away.

Louis doesn’t hold back in gaping at that.   “What did you sharpen them with?  Your fucking jawbones?”

When Harry smirks just a smidge (it’s barely even noticeable), Louis realizes he’s probably coming off a little  _too_  impressed.

“I mean…it’s  _alright_ ,” Louis says, shrugging as he turns back toward the fire.  “I think I’ve seen something like it before.”

He’ll steal them later.

More silence follows, both of them now observing the fire as a pair.  Louis is most definitely  _not_  admiring the beauty of this fire, because as before stated, he doesn’t have time for things like that.  He’s simply assessing its characteristics and making a note of how it’s managing to stay lit for so long.

“Do you ever miss them?” Harry asks after a while, his voice at a low volume, albeit still deep.

Louis looks at him questioningly.

Harry stares back at him for a moment before shifting his eyes back to the fire.  “Your family.”

Louis shakes his head.  “Fuck no.”

He doesn’t dare to rip his eyes away from the fire once he feels Harry staring at the side of his face.

He swallows before speaking again.  “They gave into the system.  They were cowards.”

Harry doesn’t say anything as he continues to rest his eyes upon Louis’ profile.

“And I’m…” Louis starts, scratching at his arm a bit.  “They weren’t anything like me.  I don’t care.  Anyone who was  _actually_ family wouldn’t leave me to fight for myself.”

He becomes angrier the longer he sits, the longer he thinks about it.

“God, I fucking  _hate_  The City,” Louis spits, his volume rising.  He shoots up from where he’s sat, raising two middle fingers up to the direction he believes The City to be in.  “Fuck you, fuck you,  _fuck_ you!”

He continues to yell profanities at the sky, and his eyes definitely aren’t tearing up a bit—there’s probably still a little rain falling around.

He shifts his eyes back down when he hears a sound from below.  He looks at Harry confusedly, but he finds the boy smiling.

He’s laughing.

Louis sits down slowly, his eyes full of wonder as he watches Harry chuckle, because the boy has—he has those things in his cheeks that look like tiny, dark holes.

 _Dimples_.  That’s what they’re called.

Louis realizes in this moment that Harry hadn’t laughed or even as much as cracked a smile in the entire twenty four hours they’d known each other.

Harry’s laugh doesn’t last anywhere near as long as Louis needs it to, but when it ends, his eyes are still bright as he looks at Louis.

“You know Louis…” Harry starts, scratching at his knee for a moment.  “Even though I despise you most out of every human that has ever lived, I’ve gotta give you your props.”

Louis stares at him with a slightly puzzled look.

“You’re actually really good at survival and…” Harry furrows his eyebrows in concentration.  “Extremely skilled.”

“ _Finally_ you acknowledge this,” Louis says dramatically, letting out an exhausted huff.

He’s hoping for Harry to laugh again—or at least grin slightly, or  _something_ —but he just strokes his chin as he continues to look thoroughly concentrated.

“Well, I admire everything except the murdering,” Harry says.  “I’m not giving you props for that part.”

It’s just like Harry to fill Louis’ head with insane amounts of arrogance and then pop it in an instant.  Louis sulks a bit as he presses his lips together.

“How could you not like…care?” Harry asks, his eyes finally moving to meet Louis’.  The viridescent hue in his irises are intensified by the fire, and Louis can easily tell that he’s extremely passionate about what he’s saying, even though he’s not showing it too much.  His eyes are saying everything.

“Like, people’s lives,” Harry continues, beginning to fumble with his fingers.  “How it affects the others that care about them.”

Louis scoffs as he shakes his head at Harry.  “Like I always told Zayn…”  He’s fully unprepared for how the sound of the name causes some type of discomfort to come about in his chest.  But anyway.  “The era of morals has ended.  Now is the time for every man to look out for himself.  Who cares about all that extra, sappy shit?”

Harry rests his chin on his fist as he leans toward Louis a little.  “Kill me then.”

Louis narrows his eyes at him for a second, and he can’t tell if Harry is being smug or not.  God, the boy must have some kind of super power, because he can keep the straightest face, providing Louis with no insight whatsoever as to what’s going on inside his head.

“Keeping you alive decreases my chances of dying,” Louis replies, pushing himself up to his feet in order to get some movement going.  When he glances down as he walks around a bit, he sees it—Harry’s dimples pop out again, but only briefly.

“Besides,” Louis starts, reaching out to grip at a branch.  “Don’t act like you’ve never killed anyone before.”

Quietude consumes the area as the fire continues to burn, and since Louis is positioned behind Harry, he can’t tell what he’s thinking.  Louis figures he’s probably hit a nerve, because Harry is silent and completely frozen—it doesn’t even look like he’s breathing.

Louis walks back up to the log, getting down on his knees behind it and resting his elbows on top.  He attempts to get a glimpse of Harry’s facial expression, and he finds him staring blankly at the fire.

“I hate myself for it.”

Louis blinks profoundly at the words, not expecting them to come out of Harry’s mouth.

No more dimples anytime soon.

Louis takes some time to observe his surroundings as Harry appears to be dissociating. 

He thinks back to a year ago, even though he’s always told himself that it’s not good to dwell on the past—especially on the  _deep_  past.

But he does it anyway, because Harry’s making him feel weird, and now he’s starting to think about old times.  A year ago from now, he probably would’ve been sat on the living room couch, watching the night program before he had to go to bed at eight on the dot.  It baffles him how much has changed since then.  He never would’ve even  _dreamed_  he’d be capable of doing some of the wild things he’s done in the last few months.

“How do you  _not_  miss them?” Harry asks, and his tone of voice bears a hint of deep emotion, as though he’s struggling to understand Louis.

Louis shrugs as he leans forward on the log.  “I dunno, I just.  Don’t.”

Harry makes a sound that sounds like a bitter laugh, even though there is no visible curve in his lips.

“I’m nothing like the rest of you subhumans, with all your unnecessary emotions.”

Harry shakes his head very faintly, and Louis’ had enough of this weird shit.

He stands up, clasping his hands together as he walks toward the trees.  “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to gather some leaves to sleep on top of—not because I can’t build a shelter, but because I’m lazy and tired.”

He begins scraping up giant leaves from the ground as Harry faces the fire.  Once he finally gets enough so that his body won’t be laid on top of mud for the duration of the night, he holds them in his arms as he walks past Harry.

“I bid you a goodnight,” Louis says cordially, before finding some area in the corner to set down the leaves.

At some point, Harry gets up as well, and he seems to be doing the same as Louis as he begins to pick leaves from trees and move through the forest.

Louis reaches out and pulls the nearest rock close, setting his head on top of it as he now watches the fire from afar.

Harry’s nowhere to be seen now, which probably means he’s most likely going to go the extra mile—as  _always_ —and build an actual shelter.  Whatever.  He can have fun with that, because Louis is exhausted as hell.  He’s perfectly fine sleeping on top of these leaves with his head nice and comfy against a rock.

He’s never been better.

He turns on his other side in order to face away from the fire, the only view now occupying his sights being the inky shadows of the trees.  His arms curl around his torso as he tries to get comfortable.

He feels a single wet trail of some sort sliding down the side of his cheek as he continues to lay, but he doesn’t know what it is.  Probably that darn rain again.

After a few minutes, he moves the rock away, because there’s no possible way it could ever be comfortable.  He keeps his head settled on the leaves underneath, feeling weary of the fact that he isn’t going to get the head support he needs tonight.

When he feels as though he’s on the verge of sleep, he hears footsteps approaching and hopes they’re Harry’s.  He  _really_  doesn’t feel like fighting off some stranger right now.

He flips over to find that it  _is_  Harry, except—he’s coming right at him.

His feet are moving with purpose, he’s practically  _power walking_  towards Louis, and as Louis blinks at him through sleepy eyes, he’s pretty sure Harry’s officially decided that he’s going to kill him.

Louis braces himself as Harry approaches, allows himself to be jerked forward when Harry leans down and grips the collar of his t-shirt.

Harry maneuvers his body to rest over Louis’, his knees now on either side of Louis’ hips as he pushes him back down into the ground, his back aching only a little as Harry continues to grip his shirt.

Louis’ not sure of what’s happening as he and Harry lock eyes, but it definitely doesn’t feel like murder.

Harry’s hands slide from Louis’ collar bone to his shoulders, and he uses his firm fingers to press Louis’ arms to the ground above his head—and Louis is held there incredibly  _tight_.

Then Harry leans down, and he kisses him.

Louis forgot kisses existed, to be honest.  It shocks him greatly, causes his fingers to tingle with sensation as they remain tangled within the leaves upon the ground.   The kiss isn’t aggressive either—Harry moves his lips against Louis’ with a gentle ease that Louis just isn’t used to.  It’s foreign, the way they’re being extremely soft and compliant with one another, because the both of them have been nothing but relentless and cruel up until now.  Louis’ mind is always dead set on killing and surviving and  _defeating_.

Right now his mind is completely silent.  It’s his senses that are on fire.

A flame ignites in his mouth when he feels Harry’s tongue glide against his for a second, and he begins to move his head enthusiastically to every attachment of their lips.

When their lips come apart, Louis’ eyes take a while to open, but when they do, he finds Harry still gazing down at his mouth.  He feels heat accumulating everywhere on his body.

Then Harry releases him and, as if nothing had happened, gets off of Louis and walks back over to the log next to the fire.

He doesn’t look at Louis for the rest of the night, even though Louis’ eyes remain in his direction, slightly hazy as he gradually falls asleep.

When he wakes up, surprisingly, he’s  _not_  on a raft in the middle of the ocean; he’s exactly where he’d been the night before.

He yawns as he brushes his cheek against the leaves, and he tries not to scowl at the sounds of birds chirping in the distance.  He lays there for a long while after he wakes up, because he doesn’t see Harry anywhere, and he doesn’t feel like facing the day on his own just yet.  Of course, he  _could_ , but he just doesn’t  _feel_  like it.

When another hour passes and Harry is still nowhere in sight, Louis figures the boy probably left him.

Welp.

“So much for brotherhood, right?” Louis mumbles sleepily as he shifts to sit up.  He rubs his hands against his eyes, feeling tremendously shitty from the horrible night of sleep he’d endured.

“Although we can’t really consider ourselves brothers now,” Louis mutters to himself, taking a moment to think.  “That would be weird.”

He groans and whines as his bones crack while he attempts to stand up.

Guess he’s on his own again, which is fine.  Harry could’ve given him a head’s up or  _something,_  though.

Only a few more steps past their tiny settlement, Louis almost trips over him.

He’s using gigantic leaves (Seriously,  _where_  did he find them?) as a blanket to cover his body, and his jacket is folded under his head as he continues to remain asleep.  Louis stands over him, taking notice of how he snores a little and probably doesn’t know it.

Louis leans down and shakes his leg a few times, but it doesn’t seem to work.  When he takes his leg and pulls him hastily, that’s when the boy starts to move around, rubbing at his eyes as he continues to shift under the leaves.

“Wake up.  Sleeping the day away isn’t allowed in survival,” Louis says, stepping over Harry as the boy finally starts to sit up.

Harry just groans as Louis taps his foot impatiently.

“It’s a quarter past…” Louis starts, before pausing for a moment.  “Well, I don’t know what it’s a quarter past, but it’s inappropriate for you to be waking up this late.”

“Shut up,” Harry grumbles, and he pinches his fingers around a stem on the ground before plucking it away.  He yawns as he ties half of his hair up once again.

Once he gets his jacket on, grabs his arrows, and is finally alert enough to walk, they begin on their journey to wherever the fuck there’s food and quite possibly,  _life_.

At some point, the trees (surprisingly) end, and there’s a long, grassy field that they have to trudge through in order to get to another area where there’s probably more wildlife.

Harry’s eyes frequently dart up to the sky as they walk.

“We should probably hide,” he says at some point.

Louis looks pointedly at Harry, but the boy doesn’t return his glance.  “Oh really?  Why?”

“I feel like there’s a City Raid happening soon.”

Louis chuckles dryly as he drags his feet.  “They’re  _surprise_  attacks, Harry.  No one can magically tell when they’re coming.”

“Sometimes I feel like I can,” Harry says.  He bites his bottom lip as he concentrates his gaze on the sky.  “You see the way that cloud moves?”

Louis raises his eyebrows fairly high.  “It’s a  _cloud_.  It has  _nothing_  to do with a robot-based attack produced by humans.”

“I’m telling you, I can sense it.”

Louis pats him on the shoulder.  “Okay tough guy.”

Harry shakes his head as they continue their journey.

Louis spots something off to the side as they continue on the field, and even though Harry tells him repeatedly not to go and see what it is, Louis does it anyway, because his intuition is  _always_ spot on.

Louis had seen a metallic figure of some sort behind a generally small, rocky hill off to a corner of the field, and he was determined to find out what it was.  How often does one come across  _metal_  in the wild?

Once they reach the hill, Harry groaning all the way there, Louis’ eyes glimmer with fulfillment from the luck he’s stumbled upon.

“Holy shit,” Harry says upon seeing it as well.

Louis gets down on his knees in front of what he’s found, which includes a very bloody backpack, a short rope, and a—wait for it, a  _disk_.

Now, a disk is something that’s fairly rare anywhere outside of The City.  It has a diameter of seven feet, and it’s basically a six-inch thick, giant metal disk that hovers only three or four feet over the ground, but definitely gets anyone to wherever they need to go easily.  Especially if their only form of transportation is their feet, since  _someone_  blew up their ship.

Harry gets down on the ground next to Louis as well, examining the items.  “Someone died here…”

“A  _disk_  Harry!”  Louis exclaims, inspecting the huge metal object.  It has many dents, and it appears to be pretty rusty, but Louis’ sure it’ll still fly fine.

Harry observes the disk as well, moving it around in order to look at all the damages.  He lets out a sigh once his eyes are cast upon something unfortunate.  “It doesn’t work.  See?  It’s missing two screws.”

Louis waves him off.  “Easily fixable.”

Harry doesn’t look the least bit convinced as he flashes Louis a bored expression.  “I’d  _love_  to see you make some screws out of thin air.  This is  _technology_  Louis, not some type of wilderness thing.”

“Got any of those sharp rocks you made last night?” Louis asks, holding his hand out for them.

Harry hesitantly reaches into his bag and pulls one out, and Louis grants him a smile, along with a sweet “thank you”.  He picks up some nearby twigs and gets to work, and he’s rather offended at the fact that Harry appears to be extremely fed up.  Has he not  _learned_  by now that Louis is right one hundred percent of the time?  That he is literally the fixer of all things unfixable?

The work takes some time, but when he finishes, the entire disk lights up like a Christmas tree.  Even Harry’s eyes grow big as he ogles at it, filling Louis with an intense sense of pride for getting it to work.

Harry digs through the backpack for a moment.  “Whoever owned this was rich.”

He holds the bag open in Louis’ direction, showing him all of its contents.  Inside, there’s pretty much everything a person could desire and more.  There are tons of knives, a handheld gun, even _pepper spray_ —but the one thing that gets Louis’ attention is the shiny silver stick.  He reaches in and pulls it out, and he’s pretty certain this is the first time he’s ever seen one of these things in real life.

Harry seems completely lost on what it is that Louis is holding exactly.

“We’ve hit the jackpot,” Louis says with a smile.  “We will never die.”

Harry rolls his eyes as he leans forward on the palms of his hands.  “What is it?”

“I forgot what it’s called, but I’m pretty sure this is the weapon that flies back to you after it pierces through flesh.”

“It’s electronic?”

Louis nods, gesturing at the small button at the front.  Right now, it appears to be a long, metallic cylinder, but Louis has seen one of these things before (on that—that square he used to watch, with the programs and stuff), so he knows that when the button is pressed, the blades come out on either end.  All the attacker has to do is throw it, and it will continue shooting forward until it plunges through flesh, before flying back around to the thrower and retracting its blades.  There was once a time when Louis was scared shitless of this thing.

“That’s wild,” Harry says.

Louis shoves it back into the backpack.  “Keep it safe.”

They begin to get back on their feet as Louis tries to figure out how exactly to work the disk.

“If you don’t know how to use it, just leave it behind.”

Louis ignores him as he continues pressing buttons, and Harry ends up sitting on the edge of it as he waits.  At some point, Louis presses the wrong button and the entire thing goes flying at high speed, taking Harry with it. Louis remains crouched down on the ground, his mouth wide with shock as he watches it come to a sharp stop several feet away.  The jerk causes Harry to fall off of it completely, straight on his ass as Louis laughs amusedly.

Louis skips over as Harry grimaces in pain.  “Guess I know how to get it flying now.”

After a few more minutes of getting used to the disk, falling off of it many times, and figuring out how to steer, they finally begin to make progress as the disk floats through the air at a reasonable speed.  Harry sits at the back with his feet dangling off the edge as Louis controls the buttons at the front.

Louis is on a mission to find some other form of life—preferably  _human_.  It worries him a little, the fact that he hasn’t seen a single other person out here, but he keeps faith.  There  _has_  to be some more people out there who are surviving.

They continue to glide above the ground in silence, Louis concentrated purely on getting across the messy field and submerging into the forest ahead.  A raven crows from afar, and the air around them is dark and gloomy, despite it being morning time.

Something catches his eye in the distance, and it looks like a tiny explosion of dust has taken place within the high grasses of the field.  He calmly breathes in and out, and then he sees another explosion happen a bit closer to them.

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath.

The dust bombs continue to fall from the sky, making faint whistle sounds as they come down, and Louis hears Harry groan behind him.

He presses the buttons on the front of the disk, trying his best to dodge all of them, but failing when one of them crashes right onto the surface of the disk, exploding with dust and showering over them.  It causes a horrible, dreadful burning sensation to settle over their skin.

They’re not  _real_  bombs.  In fact, they don’t actually cause harm—they’re supposed to bring pain to the victim in order for them to believe they’re actually in danger.  The effect of the dust causes one’s skin to begin to feel like thousands of microscopic needles are being stabbed into it.

It works, because Harry and Louis begin screaming in pain as the bombs continue drop all around them, now much more severe and torrential.

Louis can barely breathe as the dust blocks his view and continues to prick at his skin.  The bombs just continue to come down, hard and relentless as the disk shakes uncontrollably.  Louis looks behind him and can’t even tell if Harry’s there anymore, due to all the compromised air.

It seems the disk can only bear so much, because as soon as a particularly giant bomb hits the side of it, the thing goes crashing down, causing both Louis and Harry to roll off it and tumble over one another.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hears Harry whimper.

Louis doesn’t spend one moment thinking about his own potential concussion before screaming at Harry.  “ _Run!”_

Once Harry takes off, Louis thinks fast, looking down at where the contents of the bag are now scattered over the floor before reaching down to swipe the silver stick into his hands.  He runs to catch up to Harry, tears prickling at his eyes as he begins to feel like he’s being burned alive.

They dodge all of the bombs as best as they can while they sprint through the wild grass and ignore the excruciating pain they’re experiencing.

Harry successfully jumps over one bomb before it even explodes, and Louis doesn’t dwell on how unbelievable it is that he even knew it was there.

“I fucking  _told_  you!” Harry yells.

Louis continues to dart from side to side, even impressively managing a forward roll at the last minute in order to avoid an explosion.  “Perhaps,” he says through heavy breaths as he continues to run wildly.  “Save the ‘I told you so’’s for a time where we’re not running for our  _lives_!”

He continues to hold the silver stick firmly in his hands as he pumps his fists quick and fast, and he’s quite grateful that he even managed to grab it.  Right now, it’s the only thing the both of them have to survive—they don’t have enough time to go back and grab everything else.

When a large shadow settles over the both of them, Louis doesn’t even have to look up to know what it is.  This is the next part of the attack—the part where it gets even  _more_  brutal.

Louis’ not gonna lie; he’s a  _little_  shaken right now, because he’s never been in such clear sight during a City Raid before.  He and Harry are out in the  _open_  for goodness’ sake, and there doesn’t seem to be a hiding area for another two hundred feet.

“STOP,” is all they hear, over and over again in that dreadful, deafening robotic tone from up above.  Both of them don’t slow down their feet even a little, and Louis’ pretty sure this is the fastest he’s ever run in his life.

“STOP.”

When the dust bombs finally stop coming down, Louis closes his eyes as he continues to run, bracing himself for the bots to settle on the ground.  He feels the wind of them swooping down, and when they begin to land upon the path in front of him and Harry,  _that’s_ when his feet start to slow down a bit.

There’s not much to describe about the bot, if Louis’ being truthful.  It’s a huge, black blob of hard, sharp metal, and it’s controlled by a computer that someone’s probably operating at The City.  Of course they’d rather control things from thousands of miles away than actually step towards them and fight like men.  Cowards.

The bots begin to swoop down in large numbers, starting to surround him and Harry as they slow down, both of them looking at each other for direction.  Louis can see it in Harry’s eyes when he gazes at him for a second—the boy is scared.  He thinks this is it for them.

The bots lift off of the ground and start zooming towards them, and Louis wastes no time before violently grabbing Harry’s arm and pulling him along as he runs, managing to escape through a thin opening between two of the bots.

“They’re  _robots_ ,” Louis pants as he runs, now at his maximum speed.

He finally comes to a sharp stop and dips down into an area of the field where the grass is significantly higher, and Harry makes wide eyes at him.

“Why are you  _stopping_?”

They remain squatted down together as the automated sounds of the robots telling them to stop continues.  Louis sets the silver stick on the ground beneath them.

“I’ve learned something about these fuckers after the last few times I’ve gotten caught up in a City Raid,” Louis whispers, continuing to breathe heavily.  “They’re practically blind.”

Harry stares at him bewilderedly, hanging onto every word he’s saying as he swipes his tongue over his lips.

“They detect human things, like…” Louis snaps a bit, trying to jog his memory.  “Excessive sweat, heavy breathing.”  He and Harry share a knowing look as they both attempt to steady their breaths.  Neither of them is sweating drastically, so Louis figures they’re safe.

Harry nods in understanding.  “Like blood.”

Louis points at him as he grins.  “Yes, exactly.  They can’t see us.  They can only sense us.”

Harry nods as he tries his absolute best to quiet his breathing.

They both peek through the long blades of grass, watching as the bots now zoom around aimlessly, with no sense of direction whatsoever.

Slowly, Harry brings his gaze back to Louis, eyes filled with a foreign spark that Louis hasn’t seen in his entire time of knowing him.

“I didn’t know that,” he says, his voice low.

Louis smirks a bit shyly, keeping his voice low as well, even though it’s not from fear of the bots hearing them.  He just has a sudden  _urge_  to speak softly.  “’Course you didn’t.”

Harry exhales a bit, one side of his lips curving upward as he continues to stare at Louis, and as soon as the dimple appears, Louis seems to forget that they’re in the midst of an attack.  He forgets all that has been at the forefront of his mind for several months now:  _survive, kill, defeat._

“STOP.”

The robotic voice, almost alarmingly close, doesn’t even bother Louis as he watches Harry lean into him again, just like the night before.  When the feeling of Harry’s hand flattening around his lower waist causes an instant warmness to circulate his torso, his eyes flutter shut involuntarily and all he can think about is how eager he is for their lips to meet again.

And that’s dangerous.

Louis wraps one arm around the back of Harry’s neck as their lips press against one another, Harry’s hand continuing to caress the back of his waist and pull him in gently.  Louis can’t even  _hear_  the warning calls of the bots anymore, the clinking of metal as they fly across the field, because Harry is occupying every corner of his mind.  He hums into the kiss when Harry takes his bottom lip between his teeth, and his hand comes up to twirl through the wild, tangled curls of his hair as they seem to get lost in one another.

Harry’s breath stutters when Louis brushes a strand of his hair behind his ear, and he doesn’t even know  _why_  he does that.

He moves to bunch Harry’s jacket collar in his fist, pulling him closer as Harry wraps his arm more firmly around Louis’ back, completely enveloping him as they start to get increasingly entangled with each other through the gentle brush of their tongues, the curiosity of their wandering hands, and the shared cloudiness of their heads.

Louis detaches his lips from Harry’s with one last, deep peck, and their heads remain pressed together, eyes closed.

“I…” Louis breathes, feeling Harry’s knuckles brush up his right arm.

He reaches out and rips a blade of grass out of the ground, before sucking in all of his breath.  Quickly, and without thought, he swipes the sharp edge of it against Harry’s palm, finally opening his eyes as he watches the thick blood begin to flow out from the cut.

Harry’s jaw is completely slack as he looks at his hand, and then at Louis, but Louis just shakes his head before grabbing the silver stick he had set down on the ground.  He grips it tightly in his hand and runs off, not trying to stick around and wait for when the bots would sense his blood.

He glances back momentarily once he gets only a few feet away, and he finds the bots already surrounding Harry, closing in on him.

He tries not to grimace, attempts to tune out the screams and grunts he hears from Harry as the boy probably tries to shake the bots off of him.  Louis just wants to yell at him that there’s no use in trying, because when those bots get a grip around someone’s arm, it’s  _impossible_ to escape.

As Louis’ fast feet finally carry him into the forest of trees and bushes, he looks back once more and can only see the faint blur in the distance, the bots now completely covering Harry’s body, leaving him with no opening to the outside world.

Louis figures he’s in the clear as he scratches his head, so he doesn’t bother running as he turns around and continues on his journey.

It’s not like Harry's going to  _die_.  The bombs and bots are not meant to murder; all they do is attempt to seize the individual before grabbing a hold of them and forcing them to go back to The City.  Louis’ pretty sure that right about now, they’re soaring back up into the air, Harry dangling from their grip as they enter back into the ship in the sky that they came from

Harry had been making a big deal about missing his family anyway, so now he’s going to finally get to see them.  Louis feels it was a fairly thoughtful gesture, even though Harry probably doesn’t realize it yet.

It’s strange, imagining Harry getting dragged back to The City and having to conform to society and their oppressive way of living.

Louis pushes the thought away with a shrug as he continues on his feet, staring at the silver weapon that is still in his hand.  He has to protect it with his life, or he dies, simple as that.  He can’t carve rocks out of nothing, like Harry.

The further he walks, the more he realizes there is practically nothing in view that he can even use to make a weapon out of thin air.  He’s completely alone now, and there probably isn’t another human for many miles.

Even though he now has all the time in the world to hunt for himself, and he had been so excited to use the special weapon in his hands, he doesn’t feel hungry anymore.  A feeling of sickness seems to poke at his stomach, causing him to wince at the thought of eating, and he doesn’t know why.

He just walks, and walks.  He walks until the sun starts to go down, and he doesn’t even have a solid idea of what his motive is.  He can’t hear as much as a small animal dashing through the forest, or a flurry of wind, or a mosquito buzzing by his ear.  Or Harry.

Louis spots the edge of a hill off to the side and approaches it, his eyes squinting as the sun appears to be larger than usual, just beginning to touch the horizon.  Louis walks toward the edge of the hill, discovering that it’s probably more of a cliff, and he sits down, allowing his feet to dangle off of the edge.  He leans back on the palms of his dirty, callused hands, continuing to set his sights upon the bright, overbearing sun as it begins to cast a myriad of colors over the sky.

He still  _isn’t_  admiring it.  Just watching.

After a long period of staring and probably worsening his eyesight, he twists his torso to look behind him.  He doesn’t know why he expects to see something—or someone—as he looks behind him.  He’s alone out here, just like he’s always wanted to be.

Still, the sight of nothing but various plants and grassed hills causes him to bite the inside of his cheek, feeling something squirm inside of him.

So, the boy seriously  _didn’t_  make it.

They got him, and they had long taken him away.

Louis scratches at his arm as certain  _thoughts_  start to make their way to the front of his mind.

Doing that to Harry was  _completely_ necessary. The boy was becoming more of a distraction than an accomplice, and he was beginning to stray Louis from everything he had always told himself to stay focused on.  What he did was right in every way, even though a quiet, essentially noiseless whisper in his head keeps saying it was wrong.

A sound in the bushes causes his eyes to dart back to the forest behind him.  When all is still, he sighs, turning back around to face the sun that now appears to be a semicircle as it gradually lowers.

He ignores every other sound he hears from behind, because it doesn’t matter.  For some reason, Louis’ fucked up, warped mind wants it to be him, and he’s trying to suppress the hopefulness with everything he has.

He scratches at his arm some more as he gulps, and his mind continues to repeat  _What have I done?_

The bushes behind sound like they’re being jostled around by some animal, but Louis doesn’t stir.  If it’s a vicious carnivore that spotted him from afar, come to rip his body to shreds and feast on his flesh, he doesn’t care anymore.  It’s survival of the fittest, and Louis is starting to feel as though he isn’t fit enough anymore.

When the sounds behind him clearly start to resemble footsteps, he furrows his eyebrows and waits.  Maybe his ears are playing tricks on him—maybe he’s  _hallucinating._

Torturingly slow, he twists his torso around as he looks behind him again, and his breath gets caught in his throat.

The boy is a complete  _mess_.  His jacket is now missing half of a sleeve, and there are many other gnarly rips upon it that Louis’ pretty sure it doesn’t even qualify as a jacket anymore.  His hair is no longer tied up, and it’s flying every which way, forming a frame of chaos around his face, which is riddled with red scratches and dried blood all over.  His face is barely recognizable behind the dirt, as well as what looks like a purpled bruise, great and big on the right side of his forehead.  Both palms of his hands are bloody as he approaches, averaging one step per five seconds.

Louis scrambles to get up as he watches him, and he nearly stumbles over his feet once he finally stands.  He plasters a smile on his face as best he can, even though his eyes are starting to grow a bit misty.

“You  _made_  it,” he says, as though congratulating him.  “Can’t say I’m surprised…I mean, you  _are_  the greatest, after all.”  Louis slowly approaches him, Harry not saying a word, even though his eyes do all the talking.

“I will no longer call myself the strongest,” Louis continues, before bending over and legitimately  _bowing_ to Harry.  He doesn’t want to die right now, and they’re on a  _cliff_ , so Louis is doing any and everything to save his ass.

“That title is now yours,” Louis says, gesturing at Harry.  He holds the silver stick with two hands as he takes another few steps toward Harry.  “How about we…put this whole thing behind us, and—“

Harry closes the area between them in three steps, getting right up in Louis’ space and reaching down to grip at the silver stick.  Both of them now hold onto it, their noses nearly touching as Louis closes his eyes.

Harry doesn’t seem like he’s trying to take it; he’s just holding it firmly, his fists in between Louis’ as they both continue to grasp it.

Louis gracefully lets his forehead fall forward in order to rest against Harry’s, and he feels a strange sensation of… _protection_ , as he breathes him in.  It’s ironic, because Harry’s probably going to do anything  _but_ protect him now, but Louis can’t deny what he feels.

As their mouths approach closer to one another, and Louis can hear nothing apart from their shared breaths, he’s pretty certain that Harry’s either going to kiss him, or kill him.

Louis’ words are shaky and full of breath when he speaks against Harry’ lips.  “I’m sorry.”

There’s an instant where his words are suspended in the silent air, and Louis’ almost  _positive_  they’re going to kiss as Harry’s head starts to tilt just a bit.

Suddenly, he rips the stick out of Louis’ grasp, pressing his forehead into Louis’ more forcefully.  “ _Fuck_  you,” he practically growls, and Louis doesn’t even get to process everything before he’s left with the cold presence of where Harry once stood in front of him.

It takes him a few seconds to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is Harry stalking away and disappearing into the bushes, taking the silver stick with him.  He doesn’t even turn around.

He then hears quick sounds within the forest, and it becomes clear that Harry’s running.

Louis’ still in the exact same spot, lost and breathless.

Louis is weaponless, has no food, and no means of shelter.  He’s going to die soon, for sure.

That is, if his own guilt doesn’t kill him first.

 

 


End file.
